The wrong packaging can make or break your diner’s experience. With a growing demand for takeout, delivery, and catering, restaurant operators should embrace an increase in packaging costs. Something so little as a higher quality material, or something innovative like an indicator to let consumers know their food may have been tampered with in transit is critical.

On this episode of The Takeout, Delivery, and Catering Show, Valerie and Erle speak with Jennifer Crawford, director of off-premise sales at Fazoli’s System Management, an Italian quick-service restaurant, and Ernie Davis, National Account Manager for Accurate Box, a box manufacturing plant that produces high graphics boxes. The group discusses what is quickly becoming a true differentiator for brands as more and more product is going the way of takeout, catering, and delivery.

Be sure to stay tuned for the next season, and if you have questions for Erle or Valerie, please reach out to us at producer@foodabletv.com!

SHOW NOTES

8:43 - The Challenges of Corrugating to Franchisees

11:39 - The Challenges In The Delivery Channel and Packaging Innovations

The off-premise paradigm shift continues to force restaurant operators to change their operations or risk being left behind. Erle Dardick, a foodservice takeout, delivery, and catering expert and CEO and Founder of Monkey Group, and Valerie Killifer, editor of Catering Insights both know a thing or two about helping multi-unit restaurant executives create successful off-premise revenue channels and have been sharing their knowledge in The Takeout, Delivery, and Catering Show podcast. The idea is to provide you, the operator, with strategies and insights that will help you leverage your brand and make your off-premise initiatives smart, fast, and profitable. As a restaurant operator, if you have not listened to The Takeout, Delivery, and Catering Show, then you are missing out on the only podcast that is tackling the many questions and challenges in the off-premise space.

We are nearing the end of the first season, so in this episode, we decided to answer some of your questions. From food safety issues in the delivery channel to social media marketing, we cover the gambit of the most significant problems facing operators today.

Be sure to stay tuned for the next season, and if you have questions for Erle or Valerie, please reach out to us at producer@foodabletv.com!

SHOW NOTES

26:48 - Question 5: What will impact the future of your off-premise business more, automation or AI?

36:35 - Question 6: What is the biggest challenge to growing takeout and delivery sales?

39:06 - Question 7: How does takeout fit into off-premise and how can it best serve the customer?

50:27 - Question 8: Who are my biggest competitors in off-premise?

00:42 - Welcoming Paul Barron, CEO to the show.

01:19 - Question 1: When it comes to delivery, how do you protect your business from a food safety issue?

The last major shift in the hospitality industry resulted in the creation of hundreds of fast casual brands in the mold of Chipotle and Panera Bread. One thing that we can credit to the fast casual segment is that it changed the look and model of restaurants forever with a focus on speed but also not willing to compromise on quality. Fast casual proved a model that some said was not possible and changed the landscape of the restaurant industry.

Today, off-premise driven by technology, and a generation that grew up on convenience is changing the restaurant model again, likely forever. By now, we have all heard the term ghost restaurants or virtual restaurants, and that this is the next big thing. The definition of a ghost restaurant depends on who you talk to but basically, it is defined as a restaurant that only offers delivery — no storefront. The savvy restaurants are using this model to their advantage, and more innovation around ghost restaurants is happening all the time.

Channel differentiation and maximizing efficiencies are key to generating profits with your off-premise channels. Assuming your restaurant is already built and a major renovation may be too costly, so how can you do it? Kitchen Podular, partner of Monkey Group, is an innovative company that builds customized modular kitchen solutions. These kitchen solutions can include a make-line for food preparation and a service window to divert off-premise orders away from the retail wait area, aka your very own ghost restaurant. Mike Manion, CEO of Kitchen Podular, joins Erle Dardick and Valerie Killifer to talk about the restaurants of the future and how they will operate.

Show Notes

15:26 - What does it mean to isolate production lines?20:54 - How can existing restaurants use Kitchen Podular to fulfill the 5 pillars?27:35 - The old restaurant model is getting turned on its head.

OO:46 - The supply chain is the key to keep up with market demand. 03:59 - Mike Manion, CEO of Kitchen Podular, welcome to the show!09:41 - How will ghost kitchens or ghost restaurants impact off-premise operations?

Centralized services is one of the 5 Pillars of Successful Restaurant Takeout, Catering, and Delivery, and refers to the idea of minimizing the complexity of your sales, marketing, ordering, and even IT channels to one central point outside of the restaurant. This allows your restaurant operations to focus on what’s most important, the execution and presentation of your dishes.

For example in the takeout and catering channel, it is estimated that the average restaurant misses 6 - 12 calls a day that could be leading to additional sales and revenue. Enter Inktel and Voice Teleservices which provides centralized call center operations to make sure that your restaurant is not losing out on potential customers.

In this episode of The Takeout, Delivery, and Catering Show, Valerie and Erle explore how a call center can help you maintain your customer relationships and increase sales, how centralizing these services can save you money by reallocating your labor, and how you can take your consumer back from the third-party service provider.

Best practices are one of the biggest challenges of the Off-Premise Paradigm. But that does not mean there can not be success. On this episode of The Takeout, Delivery, and Catering Show we meet Mike Axiotis, CFE, President & CEO, Lehigh Valley Restaurant Group, who is the franchise operator for Red Robin, covering Lehigh Valley, Philadelphia, and Harrisburg. Lehigh Valley is known for being a model for off-premise sales success. They have differentiated their channels with a unique transaction workflow, product selection, packaging, and centralized services. This has laid the groundwork for their successful off-premise franchise story. But, this is not the full story. This episode will explore how one franchise system launched an off-premise program, maintains their program, trains the staff, and trains the customer through marketing and other brand touch points designed to keep guests coming back for more.

Foodable Network

Foodable is the premier Network for the Restaurant and Hospitality industry. As the leading producer of Social TV, we reach hundreds of thousands of social connections that are targeted operators, foodies, chefs, suppliers, and consumers that thrive on learning more about the industry. Though quickly growing, the Foodable Network, featured on YouTube and iTunes, currently hosts seven shows: Table 42, Rock My Restaurant, Across the Bar, Food as a Lifestyle, On Foodable, Fast Casual Nation and more!

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Our Foodable Top 25 restaurant rankings are not hand-selected or chosen by an editor. These lists are based off of unstructured data from Foodable Labs, which tracks over 171K restaurants and brands, and calculates data based on the mass social audience across multiple markets and countries. The Foodable Top 25 drills down into the local-social audience, or geo-located social actions, in each respective city or market we cover. We seek the real social impact of what people think about the experience of your restaurant at the local level.